Many Parents Opting to Test Their Kids’ Sporting Genes

More and more parents are opting to test their children's DNA in order to ascertain which sport their kids are going to excel in.

Many Parents Opting to Test Their Kids’ Sporting Genes

Such genetics tests are popular in North America and Europe and while parents from the western countries utilize the tests in order to find out the temperament and the potential IQ of their children, parents in India are more interested in conducting the tests to determine what their kids will be best at as adults.

According to Chennai's Dr Naresh Padmanaban, the tests make use of the DNA acquired through a painless swab of the child's inner cheek and gene, known as ACTN3 gene, is analyzed to determine the type of muscle fibre that the children will develop as adults.

"Analysis of the ACTN3 gene can be used to predict the kind of muscle fibre the child will develop. Based on muscular make-up, we can figure out the body's capacity to adapt to different sports", he said, adding that each tests costs around Rs 2000.

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A balance in perspective, -especially in reports involving genetic screening and issues -is always healty.
ACTN3 is neither the only factor of the many other yet-unknown factors influencing athletic performance, and nor it is the crucial precipitating factor towards it. The genetic variation of ACTN3 is a minor ingredient in a large and complex recipe called athletic performance. Bottomline thus goes: ACTN3 doesn't tell/ guarantee one whether or not the child will be a super-athlete.
As the viewpoint of one the author [Daniel MacArthur] of the discovery of the link between ACTN3 and athletic performance shows, in the article- "The ACTN3 sports gene test: what can it really tell you?" http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2008/11/...

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